I've no beef with internet dating, but I have a friend who met a guy on the internet, and all was going quite well until she moved him into her home after a month or two. Turns out he practically held her hostage in her own home and she had to have him removed. She's an intelligent woman and I was quite surprised that she got sucked in by someone like that. Pays to be careful and get to know someone well.

There's absolutely no connection between this experience and the fact they met online, simply because it went that far for so long.

I've no beef with internet dating, but I have a friend who met a guy on the internet, and all was going quite well until she moved him into her home after a month or two. Turns out he practically held her hostage in her own home and she had to have him removed. She's an intelligent woman and I was quite surprised that she got sucked in by someone like that. Pays to be careful and get to know someone well.

That sounds scary but at the same time, this can very well happen offline as well. In fact, there are just too many stories out there that went wrong from the get go. I think both parties should be very careful and should take their time in getting to know each other first before they move on to the next phase, as you said. Otherwise it's just too risky.

My sister met her boyfriend of 1 and a half years over the internet, but it wasn't a dating site, rather an internet game.

I couldn't believe it recently when somebody tried it on with me over an online game of Scrabble where you can chat to your opponent while you're playing. He had no way of knowing my sex so his initial overtures were really just a shot in the dark. I went along with it for a bit until he started getting unacceptably suggestive, and that was the end of that. I gave him no information about myself, but what if I'd been, say, a twelve year old who might easily have been led into doing so? It's quite worrying to think that internet sex predators will use an innocent board game to get what they want.

I've no beef with internet dating, but I have a friend who met a guy on the internet, and all was going quite well until she moved him into her home after a month or two. Turns out he practically held her hostage in her own home and she had to have him removed. She's an intelligent woman and I was quite surprised that she got sucked in by someone like that. Pays to be careful and get to know someone well.

The fact that she let him move in after a month or two speaks volumes about her intelligence.

Really, you're asking for trouble moving in that early, offline or online.